Dreams of Eternity
by blacklilac
Summary: Jack is marooned once again, on another island, and the last person he expects to find there is Elizabeth. JE.
1. Chapter 1

**Dreams of Eternity**

**A/N: Well, this is my first attempt at a story with a plot, so wish me luck! The first chapter is Jack's POV, but the rest of the chapters will be mostly Elizabeth's. I might have a sex scene later on, so the rating might go up... I'll see how this goes without the sex first, then decide!**

**Anyways, I got the inspiration for this story from ediepedie's Youtube Sparrabeth video "the bachelor and the bride". This story is going to be very different from the video, just the beginning was inspired by it.**

Captain Jack Sparrow was always ready for betrayal. So really, the mutiny had come as no surprise. It just came as a dull resignation. Mutiny, again. He was losing track of the times. But of course, he had, in the back of his mind expected this from the first, when Barbossa freely offered him captainship of the _Black Pearl_.

So now, he was swimming towards yet another deserted island, with the same pistol with just one shot. It was funny, really, how his whole life seemed to movie in circles.

The waves were harsh, and Jack was exhausted by the time he reached the shore. He got out of the water and lay on his back in the warm, almost hot, soothing sand.

The sun was almost directly overhead, and he closed his eyes, listening. There was nothing to hear, really. Only the waves crashing against the shore in their endless thrum and the occasional scream of a gull. His life, Jack reflected, was absolutely hopeless. He had lost it all; his ship, immortality, and soon, probably, his sanity. After all, who could live alone on a damned island for long without going insane? It was too much to hope that ships passed by this island. Besides, he had given up hope.

Finally, Jack sat up. His hat, which he had brought along, most of the way in his mouth, he turned upside-down to dry. He took the pistol apart and left it to dry as well. He took off his boots, coat, and vest and got up to explore.

He walked around the island, discovering that it was slightly bigger that the one Barbossa had left him on the last two times. At this unpleasant memory, he rolled his eyes. Jack found that the powder in the pistol had dried under the hot Caribbean sun, and he put it back together.

For a second, he looked at it, considering. After all, it would be so easy, to just pull that trigger and end everything forever. But he had fought so hard for his life, and wouldn't take it himself. So Jack lifted the pistol and took aim at a passing gull. He fired, and the shot reverberated around the island like a cannon blast, making small birds in the trees rise up into the air. The bullet missed the seagull, making it swerve away. Wasted. Just like everything else he did. Cursing, Jack threw the pistol aside.

There was sand in his hair, so pulled off his shirt and went to wash the sand out. Suddenly, when he was waist-deep in the water, he heard a shout behind him.

"Who are you? Answer, or I'll shoot!"

The voice was oddly familiar, stirring something in Jack's memory. He turned. A tall, thin woman with dark golden hair stood on the beach, pointing a pistol at him. He could have known her anywhere.

Elizabeth.

For a few seconds, he stared at her, trying to figure out if her presence was a blessing or a curse. Right now, he decided, it was a blessing in heavy disguise.

He took a step back towards the shore.

"Don't take another step!" Elizabeth shouted.

"Would you really shoot me, Lizzie?" Jack called back.

She froze. Then the pistol slipped through her nerveless fingers and into the sand. She started forward.

"Jack, is that really you?" she cried, wading out into the shallows.

"Of course, love," Jack answered, walking towards the shore.

When they finally met, they paused, uncertain of what to do. Jack wanted to wrap his arms around Elizabeth, but hesitated, wondering if she would be offended. To be honest, he wanted to bloody kiss her, but she wouldn't accept that. Well, he wanted to do more than kiss her, right here in the waves, but she would probably kill him if he tried that.

Elizabeth wished he would touch her, but she remembered that he considered once to be more than enough. She felt slightly awkward, and a little afraid to look him in the eye.

"How did you get here?" she asked.

"Barbossa," Jack growled.

"You were marooned _again_?" she asked incredulously.

Jack growled accent. Elizabeth broke out laughing.

"You'll excuse me, love, but I find nothing funny."

"Do you know which time this is?"

"Third time, in living memory."

"Isn't that enough?"

"Do you think I ask for it?" Jack snarled, and Elizabeth was alarmed by his sudden anger. She hadn't meant for that to happen. He started wading angrily towards shore, and she rushed after him.

Suddenly, she was strangely conscious of the fact that Jack was only half-dressed and she tried to look away from the muscles flexing just under his sun-browned skin. She was almost disappointed when he put his shirt back on.

"Jack, I'm sorry," she said, putting a hand on his arm.

"Since when are you sorry for anything?" he retorted.

"Please, Jack, let's go to my house," she half-pleaded.

"You have a house here?"

"Of course, did you think I've lived in the sand for the past two years?" she asked. "I made it after I arrived."

Elizabeth's house was a simple wooden structure. There were leaves covering the roof against the rain, and Jack was favorably impressing with it.

They went in, and Jack saw a crib in the corner. In it, there was a sleeping baby. Elizabeth saw the direction of Jack's eyes, and the way they widened in surprise.

"That's my son," she said, feeling half-proud, half-ashamed.

**Please review and tell me how I'm doing!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

"Your son?" Jack asked, sounding as if the sound of the words was bewildering. He could not understand how the girl he had pulled out of the sea when she fainted from a too-tight corset, could already have a baby. He still saw her as the child who did not understand herself or anyone else.

"Yes," she said, turning away. She felt oddly young, too young for the baby to possibly be hers.

"How old is he?" Jack asked, before realizing that it was a stupid question to ask.

"A year and a half," Elizabeth said, dully.

"What is his name?"

Elizabeth hesitated. "His name is – Jack."

Jack turned in surprise. "You named him after me?" he asked.

Suddenly, Elizabeth was irritated. She didn't want Jack to guess the lonely hours she had spent thinking of a name for the baby, remembering him, his lips, his touch, his flirtatious ways. In some corner of her heart, she knew that the baby could only have one name. She didn't want Jack to suspect that often, she had wished that the baby was his.

"No," she snapped. "I just like the name."

"Ah, I'm sorry, love," Jack answered, but there was a teasing note in his voice that angered Elizabeth. She turned, looking livid.

"Tell me, love," Jack said hastily, "do ships come by this island often?"

"Only three times in all the time I've been here," Elizabeth said, grateful for the change of subject.

"That's rather unfortunate, seeing as I have to get off this island before you murder me."

Elizabeth smiled, finally. "I won't kill you, Jack."

"You'll give me a place under your roof?" Jack asked.

"Of course I will," Elizabeth laughed.

That night, as she lay in her bed, Elizabeth thought of what had happened. She had never expected this. She knew that she should not feel so happily grateful that Jack had come, but she did.

Slowly, she relived every word and gesture that had passed between them that day, savoring every moment. There had been, she thought, a strange light in Jack's eyes when he had looked at her as the stood in the water. He had looked as though he wanted her, and Elizabeth knew that look well. But perhaps it was just her imagination.

She thought of everything that had happened between her and Jack from the moment she met him. She thought of that time when they were on that other island. She remembered the way he had wrapped his hand around her shoulder, possessively, demandingly. Even through all those years, she felt his touch again, and her skin burned for him. She remembered that kiss. There had been something in that kiss. Yes, there had been something, something she could build on, a spark that could become a fire, if he still felt the same. She felt his hot lips on hers again, so insistent. No, once was not enough.

When she fell asleep, she dreamt of her and Jack on the beach, laughing and drinking rum and kissing and rolling in the waves. She thought she dreamt of paradise.

The next morning, she woke up to see Jack playing with her son. She called him Jacky, so that he could not be confused with Jack in her thoughts. Jacky was snatching at a piece of bright ribbon that Jack was dangling in front of him, just like a kitten.

"Has he said anything yet?" Jack asked her.

"He calls me 'Ma' sometimes," Elizabeth said.

"How about breakfast, Lizzie?" Jack asked. Elizabeth smiled, thinking of all the memories connected with that nickname.

The days rolled by, slowly turning into weeks, then months. Jacky clung to Jack and his vocabulary slowly expanded to 'captain', 'sea', 'ship', 'pearl', and, strangely, 'hat'. He loved playing with Jack's hat, and Elizabeth was surprised to find that Jack liked children.

When she and Jack were alone, Elizabeth felt strangely awkward. She wanted to say something to let him know that she felt something for him, but she was scared of a rejection. Jack looked as if he wanted to say something, but he never did. So the ocean of things neither of them said grew by the hour, and they tried to talk of anything but them and this island.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**A/N: I'm sorry this chapter is so short, I just didn't know when to cut it off!**

Jack had been with them a year, and still no ships came. Elizabeth found herself wishing that none would ever come, that she and Jack would be on this island forever, with this child that she had come to think of as theirs.

It was stupid, really, to wish that the child was Jack's, when Jack had been living with her for a year, and had not as much as touched her unnecessarily. Their hands had touched sometimes accidentally, and Elizabeth felt, every time, a rush of hope. But every time, Jack turned away. Sometimes, she thought she glimpsed a glint in his eyes, but it was only her foolish hope. Eventually, she began to feel that she was not good enough for the great Captain Jack Sparrow, who could have his pick of women in any port. It made her irritable, and she just wanted all this to come to a head.

"Jack, what will you do when you get off this island?" she asked.

"Oh, first I'll get my ship back," Jack said, "then I'll go to Tortuga and get drunk. Very drunk. You know I haven't had rum for a whole year. And when I'm drunk, who knows what will happen?"

"I suppose you'll sleep with all the whores you can?" Elizabeth asked dully.

"You surprise me, Lizzie. But you can hardly blame me if I do. I haven't had female company for over a year."

Now Elizabeth was offended.

"What am I, pray tell?" she demanded.

"You're a lovely woman, Lizzie, but also one unfortunately convinced that I'm a good man. And I must live up to that. And you know that a good man would never touch his friend's wench."

"I'm Will's wife, Jack."

"By a marriage that I'm not very sure is legal. Barbossa isn't the rightful captain of the _Pearl_."

"It's legal, Jack. You're just finding objections."

"Why would I do that? I'm a good man, remember?"

"Jack, I don't think either of us are good people."

Jack wrapped his arm around her, fingers curling around her shoulder, just like that day on that other island. Her skin seemed to burn beneath his hand, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. He would never give her love, but right now, she just wanted him.

"Perhaps not, Lizzie," he said, looking into her eyes. And there was a look in his that she understood better than any words.

**The next chapter is either going to have a sex scene or strongly imply one. I'm a little nervous about writing it, so tell me in your review if you think I should have the whole scene and up the rating to M, or just imply it and leave the rating as it is. So please review!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**A/N: Well, most people seemed to want the sex scene, so here it is! Oh, I'm nervous! By the way, I apologize in advance for any type-os, I'm not used to the computer I'm using, and the keyboard is a little uncooperative.**

She never quite remembered how they came to be outside, but they were out on the beach, where they could see the stars and the waves.

Jack pulled her against him, kissing her, finally. She pulled him closer, drinking in every moment of his lips against hers, lifting her hand to let her fingers tangle in his hair at the back. He wound one hand in her hair in turn, and ran the other down her back, drawing her as close as possible. They broke apart, out of breath. Jack started undoing the fastening of her dress at the back, and, with a moment's hesitation, she slipped her hands under his shirt. She had wanted this for so long, she enjoyed every moment utterly. As Jack was halfway through unbuttoning her dress, she pushed his shirt from his shoulders.

His muscles glistened in the moonlight and she let her hand roam over his chest. He flinched as she let her fingers slide over his nipples. Thrilled by his vulnerability, she became bolder, running her hands over his back and chest, delighted by the feeling of the scars and hard muscles under her fingers. Meanwhile, he finished undoing her dress and slipped it off. She stood before him in the silvery light, glorying in his hungry gaze, and yet slightly frightened by it.

He bent his head, kissing her breasts. Oh, God, she had never dreamt that it could be like this. His tongue and teeth were doing things she had never imagined. Her back arched, and she tangled her fingers in his hair again as he kissed lower down her belly.

"Jack," she whispered.

"What now?" Jack growled against her skin.

"I think you're still wearing too much," she gasped.

She smirked. "Right you are," he agreed. She got rid of his breeches very quickly, then hesitated.

"What are you afraid of, Lizzie?" Jack asked.

"Afraid?" she asked teasingly, and wrapped her fingers around his length. Jack started and grinned. "That's right, Lizzie," he whispered, his voice rasping with pleasure in his throat. But she let go and lay back in the sand, looking up at him, at his eyes glittering with lust. He got down in the sand beside her, and she pressed her palms flat against the warm, almost fever-hot skin of his chest. She let her hands roam lower and twisted her neck, letting her mouth pause over his left nipple for a moment, feeling his heart beat faster, rushing with excitement.

Jack straddled her, without entering. He looked into her face as if asked her something. She looked back into his black eyes and he smirked in satisfaction. He had known the answer all along. The next second, he was inside her and she clung to him, whispering his name. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, rocking against him. She felt the strong, flexing muscles on his back under her fingers, felt him inside her, and knew that this was all she ever wanted.

----------------------------------------------------

When Jack rolled away from her into the sand, they were both utterly exhausted and satisfied. Elizabeth looked at Jack. He lay on his back, chest heaving, mouth open, and a ghost of a smirk playing on it. They lay in the sand for a while, not saying a word, tired and happy.

"Lizzie," Jack said, sighing, "I wish things could stay like this forever."

For a brief moment, Elizabeth had a vision of herself and Jack, living on this island forever, perfectly together, a fleeting vision of eternity. But she knew that it was impossible. Jack didn't love her, and he had a ship somewhere in the ocean. But most importantly, he didn't love her. But God help her, she loved him.

"It's like heaven, isn't it?" Jack asked, looking up at the stars. Elizabeth curled up against him and pretended that he loved her and really did want to stay with her forever, that his words were not empty.

"Yes," she whispered her breath warm against his skin.

"But there's no place in heaven for us, is there?"

Elizabeth rolled away. "No," she said, looking at the stars, which suddenly seemed lost in a mist of tears. There was no place in heaven for her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

**A/N: Sorry I haven't updated for a while, I've had a lot of work. I'll update much more from now on!**

A ship came by the very next morning.

"I'll be back soon, Lizzie," Jack said. "I promise."

She nodded, knowing that his promises were as empty as the seashells lying on the beach. But she didn't blame him. He was a free soul and she knew that a free soul should never be anything other than free. Jack left, and Elizabeth watched the ship sail away beyond the horizon, into the great unknown that would never be part of her.

"Ma," Jack called, tugging at her skirt. Elizabeth looked down.

"What is it, Jacky?" she asked.

"Who is my father?"

Elizabeth's heart skipped a beat.

"Is Captain Jack my father?"

A soft smile played of Elizabeth's lips. There was no harm in it, really.

"Yes," she said, still smiling. "In a way," she added under her breath.

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Time went on, and Elizabeth spent most of it daydreaming. She wandered to the place where she had been with Jack that one magic night, and when she almost made herself believe that he loved her.

She did not expect Jack to ever return at all, so it came as a surprise when, four months after he left, he turned up. He didn't come on the _Pearl_, though, but on a strange ship. When she asked him about it, his eyes darkened.

"I'm sorry," she said hastily. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"It was wrecked on a reef," Jack said, in a hard, emotionless voice. She didn't know what to say. The _Black Pearl_ had been more than a ship, it had been the bulwark of Jack's life for years, and now it was irrevocably gone and she saw in Jack's eyes that his life was losing a balance that it had when he had his ship.

Jack's new ship was called the _Sea Roamer_. She was a good ship, with a good, honest crew, or as honest as pirates come. Elizabeth recognized many familiar faces from the days of the _Black Pearl_.

Jack brought gifts for Elizabeth and Jacky. He gave Jacky a small, perfect model of a ship. He gave her strange jewels, bracelets and necklaces made of gold, earrings set with rubies, and, which she prized most of all, a ring with a black pearl set in it. She thought of the ship once again, and realized that a black pearl was what she always thought of when she thought of Jack, not his ship, but Jack himself. It seemed, somehow, to symbolize his beautiful dark heart perfectly.

He stayed for three days, and every night, she was his. She could never have denied him. She loved him.

The next morning, he left. He didn't ask her to come with him.

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He came back again and again, during two years. She loved him, and yet she was angry each time he returned, because he did not love her, not even enough to stay longer than a week at a time. She wanted him to herself, always, but she knew that she could never have him.

Every time he sailed away, she stood watching the ship vanish from sight, either behind the horizon, or behind a mist of tears, with an ache of loneliness in her heart that she had never felt when Will sailed away. Every time he sailed away she wondered if she would ever see him again. Whenever she became too lonely, she closed her eyes and kissed the ring with the black pearl. The smooth, chill blackness of the stone under her lips, she wondered if he ever thought of her at all.

**Please review!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Once again, Jack stood in the doorway, every inch the Captain Jack Sparrow of legend, hat cocked arrogantly over his eye.

"What are you doing here?" Elizabeth demanded.

"I'm back, Lizzie," Jack said, sounding slightly taken aback.

"I can see that," she cried, "and you think I'm going to let you come back every time, whenever you want, get what you want, and leave? Get out!"

"Listen, Lizzie, you know I can't stay – "

"I know that, so get out and don't come back!"

"Look – "

Elizabeth screamed in rage. She couldn't stand this anymore. The months of waiting, hoping, watching the horizon every day, praying that he would come back, she simply couldn't stand it another minute. She was so angry, she was ready to kill him. He did whatever he wanted with her, and she did not like being used.

Suddenly, her furious, crazed gaze fell upon the pistol on the table. She snatched it up and lifted it, the weight almost too much for her thin wrist.

"I hate you, Jack Sparrow!" she cried, cocking it. "You filthy bastard! How dare you come back and use me! How dare you make me son love you!" Her finger slid over the trigger, and without warning, the pistol slipped clumsily in her hand and went off. She dropped it, and staggered back.

"Damn it, 'Lizabeth!" Jack shouted, clutching at his bleeding shoulder. Elizabeth rushed to him.

"You're a bitch," Jack groaned, before he fell back and Elizabeth saw that he had lost consciousness.

She got him onto her bed somehow, and tore his shirt open. The bullet had gone clean through his shoulder, and she found some cloth to clean the wound. Getting cold water, she started bathing his shoulder. Jack came to with a groan.

"What the hell are you doing to me now?" he demanded.

"Shut up and lie still," Elizabeth snapped.

Jack obeyed her for once. He lay still, letting Elizabeth clean the wound, gritting his teeth with pain occasionally, but showing no other signs of suffering. Elizabeth bandaged his shoulder as best she could, and left him to sleep without a word. It was only then that she remembered that she hadn't explained that the shot was an accident.

Jack fell into a deep, pain-induced sleep almost at once, but Elizabeth could not sleep. She lay wakeful until the early hours of the morning, thinking of all the suffering she had caused Jack just because she loved him. She destroyed everyone she had ever loved.

When she finally fell asleep, she awoke two hours later, feeling unrested and miserable.

She went to see how Jack was. She rebandaged his shoulder without saying a word.

"Lizzie, I'm sorry," Jack said, quietly.

"Why should you be sorry?" she asked.

"I thought one of us should be sorry, and as you never are, the burden seems to fall on me."

"You know it was an accident, Jack. I would never have shot you deliberately."

"I never know about you," Jack half-grinned.

"But I was very angry with you, Jack," Elizabeth told him.

"I can still feel that," Jack groaned.

"You just don't know what it's like. Do you know what Jacky says every time you leave? He asks me, 'Why is father leaving? When is he coming back?' What am I supposed to say, Jack?"

A frown appeared between Jack's eyebrows. She could tell that this was a complication that he had not forseen.

"He loves you, Jack. How can I tell him that you're not his father? It would break his heart."

"I know, Lizzie. I know," Jack said, drawing his uninjured arm around her. She could feel his worry.

_And it would break my heart, too,_ Elizabeth thought, letting her head fall back against Jack's chest.

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Because of Jack's injury, he could not leave the island. Elizabeth carried a message from him to the crew of the _Sea Roamer_ that said to come back in two months. Two months might have been more time than was strictly necessary, but Elizabeth would have been happy to have him stay for all eternity.

They told the crew and Jacky that Jack's injury was an accident, that Elizabeth had been trying to clean the pistol when it went off.

Jack healed fast, and in three weeks he was already on his feet. Jacky was thrilled that his father was staying with them for so long, and Jack told him stories about piracy on the high seas, many of which Elizabeth easily recognized as exaggerated accounts of their own adventures.

Elizabeth was startled when she walked in halfway through one of Jack's stories, and realized that he was telling Jacky of his own passionate wooing and winning of her. She didn't know whether to laugh of cry as Jack recounted his nonexistent heartstoppingly romantic proposal. She decided that it was safer to laugh.

Jacky looked around.

"Ma, it's so wonderful," he said, looking up at her with shining brown eyes.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to say that not a word of that was true, when she caught sight of Jack, pressing his finger to his lips, a look of urgency in his eyes, imploring silence. Startled, she didn't say a word, as Jack went on with his account of her fictionalized acceptance.

When Jacky had gone outside, she rounded on Jack.

"What is all this nonsense?" she asked, feeling irritated. "Why are you telling Jacky this? Even Will never made a proposal like that."

"Can't you see that it's important for the lad to know that he has a normal family?"

"Well, he doesn't. And the sooner he gets used to that, the sooner I can tell him the truth. Every tall tale you tell him about you and me will make it harder for me… when the time comes."

A darkness seemed to fall between them. They always avoided the subject of Will's return.

"Alright, Lizzie," Jack sighed. "Nothing more about you and me."

Elizabeth went outside, hoping the breeze blowing in from the sea would soothe away the tears that rolled down her cheeks.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

**A/N: I know that a lot of you are probably annoyed at how short my chapters are, but I love writing short things, and a long chapter is just too frustrating. I never know when to stop and when to go on, so my motto is, "when it doubt, stop". So that's how I wind up with short chapters. Please bear with me on this.**

Jack sailed away again and Elizabeth found that there was only a year left until Will's return. She was suddenly alarmed, because Jacky still knew nothing of his real father. But she kept putting off telling him, day by day, telling herself that she would tell him tomorrow. Yet when she woke in the silver sunshine of a new, perfect morning, she knew that she could not tell him, not yet, not today, and she thought, "Just one more day. One more day can't make a difference."

But the one day because a week, then two, then a month, and then Elizabeth fell ill.

She was weak and tired and faint all day, and she was grateful when Jack returned once again.

"Elizabeth?" he asked, cautiously, peering around the door half-playfully. "Any more bullets coming in my direction?"

"Jack, I'm so happy you came," she greeted him, standing up and feeling suddenly light-headed, seeing darkness momentarily. "I'm a little ill."

"What's wrong?" Jack asked.

"I have no idea, I have no fever, I'm just weak. But how are you?" she asked, mainly to start Jack talking, because she felt faint. As he talked, she did not hear a word, and saw the darkness at the corners of her eyes beginning to close in, like walls trapping her in her own mind.

The last sensation she had was one of falling. Jack caught her before she hit the floor.

---------------------------------------------

"How are you, love?" Jack asked, looking at her anxiously.

"Fine, now," Elizabeth said, sitting up in bed.

"Well, I'm sorry you're so ill, Lizzie, because, you know, you can almost make up from the whole of Tortuga on a good day."

Elizabeth grinned at his joke, then suddenly, all the color drained from her face.

"What's the matter?" Jack asked, looking at her intently.

"I'm not ill after all," she whispered, falling back against the pillows.

"What do you mean, love?" Jack asked.

She looked up at him. She had to tell him the truth, because he was part of it. "I'm with child," she said, looking him in the face.

Jack stared at her for a few seconds, and Elizabeth's impatient, angry brain cried, "Why doesn't he say something?" But she didn't say anything either, just looked away. Was he horrified? Surely he should have expected that their nights together would have a result.

"Oh, Lizzie," he whispered, his voice so low and tender that she was shocked. She looked at him and saw that there were lights shining in his dark, suddenly vulnerable, usually so impenetrable eyes. He lifted her hand fro the bed and brought it to his lips, caressing her palm with his lips, almost reverently.

She thought, suddenly, that she heard him murmur something under his breath, something that sounded wonderful and beautiful and too marvelous to be true, did he really whisper 'I love you' against her hand?

"Aren't you upset?" she asked.

"Why should I be?" he questioned.

Suddenly, a cold, dreadful thought occurred to her. She pulled her hand out of his sharply.

"I suppose it doesn't matter to you. You can just get up and walk away and leave me with the child."

There was a silence, so heave, that Elizabeth was frightened. She looked at Jack. His eyes were hard and dull, his face dark with anger and… horror.

"Is that what you think of me, Elizabeth?" he asked, his voice forcefully level.

"You haven't given me reason to think differently," she said. "You keep coming and going, coming and going…" her voice trailed off. "How many women have you gotten with child and then left them?" she asked, looking him directly in the face.

He turned away from her and stood up, walking towards the window.

"You're right," he said, in a hard, unrecognizable voice. "Why should you think differently of me?"

**Please review!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

**A/N: I sincerely apologize for the delay, I was discovering the joys and evils of livejournal. I hope you enjoy this chapter!**

The _Sea Roamer_ sailed away the next day, without Jack. He stayed on the island with Elizabeth. She had expected him to leave without a word to her, but he stayed and helped her.

She hadn't realized how much she need help, until now that she had it. Everything went smoothly with Jack and life seemed better than ever. Jack touched her familiarly, running his fingers through her hair, kissing her neck every morning when she sat down to breakfast, stroking her swelling belly. Strangely, she felt very happy when she thought of the baby. She had wanted Jacky, but she had not been happy at the prospect of bearing a child.

But now there was nothing she wanted more than to give Jack this child, even though she was sure that he didn't want it. Sometimes, when she sat on Jack's lap in the evening, with his hand on her stomach, she would lean back against his shoulder and pretend that they were a family, waiting happily for their child, both perfectly entranced with one another.

She had the child a week earlier than she had expected, and Jack did everything for her while she was recovering, indulging her slightest whim. The child was a boy, and they named him Fletcher. Jack joked that his names should be William, but Elizabeth was not amused.

The thought of Will's return was the only thing that marred her time with Jack. The knowledge of it crouched in the back of her mind, and sometimes she could not quite remember what it was, but she knew that it was there. It cast a dark cloud over their happiness and the both cursed Will silently, without bringing the subject up. Jacky, meanwhile was thrilled with his little brother.

When Elizabeth was on her feet again, she realized, with a sinking heart, that there were only two and a half months left until Will's return. She knew that she had to speak to Jack about it.

"Jack," she started, awkwardly over breakfast. "You know – "

"I know," Jack said, looking at her. "He comes back in two months and twelve days."

"How do you know so precisely?" Elizabeth asked, taken aback.

"Do you think I haven't counted every day?" Jack demanded, looking hard into her face. "Do you think that I haven't realized that every time the sun goes down, it marks one less day for me to spend with you?"

"Jack…" she breathed softly, uncertain of what to say next.

"No, Lizzie, I think I should talk now. I want you to come away with me. I want you to leave this damned island and sail the seas with me forever. Will you?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, hardly daring to believe her ears.

"I believe that someone like Will would say 'I love you' at this point."

"You love me?"

"About as close as I can come," Jack grinned.

"I can't believe it," she whispered, leaning back.

"Are you going to leave with me, Lizzie?" Jack asked.

"Of course I am," she cried, throwing her arms around him. "But why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"Well, at first I didn't know," Jack told her, looking seriously into her eyes. "I was only thinking of getting the _Pearl_ back, but when I found that she was wrecked, I suddenly realized that it was you I was looking for all along, and not a ship at all. But then I didn't know what you'd say if I told you, so I didn't."

"Oh, Jack, I love you," Elizabeth sighed.

"I know," Jack grinned, stoking her hair.

Soonafter thatthey realized that the _Sea Roamer_, which was supposed to have come a month ago, was still absent. They knew now that they were there to stay, probably at least until Will came back.

Every day, they hoped a ship would come, but none did. And every day, Will's return came closer. But somehow, it did not seem to be the awful thing they had envisioned before. Because nothing could separate them now.

On the day itself, they did not go out looking for ships, because there was only one they would see, the one they least wanted to see. It was Jacky who came to them, yelling,

"There's a ship! There's a ship coming!"

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